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" It was embraced by Republicans but blocked by other Republicans. Will it get a second chance?
On February 2, in one of his first acts as Senate Majority Leader of the 115th Congress, Mitch McConnell ushered through the repeal of the Stream Protection Rule.
The Obama-era regulation had taken eight years to write, emerging on the last day of the Obama administration, only to be snuffed out two weeks later. In the so-called War on Coal, this was the first time coal had punched back, drawing cheers from Washington to Appalachia.
“We cannot allow the legacy of the Obama administration to continue damaging our communities.” McConnell wrote in a self-congratulatory op-ed in the Lexington Herald-Leader.
The Stream Protection Rule, and “a wave of environmental regulations” like it, according to a spokesperson for the American Public Power Association, have long been the source of Republican anger towards Obama-era energy policy, which conservatives contend is the reason that 40,000 coal miners have lost their jobs, 11,000 in Kentucky alone, since 2011.
That was the year the EPA announced a stricter air standard that had the effect of forcing coal-fired power plants to shift to natural gas at a time when the price of gas had fallen to historic lows.
“This tragedy in central Appalachia is a direct result of government action,” said former governor of Kentucky, Paul Patton, a Democrat, and currently the chancellor of the University of Pikeville in Pike County, which has lost 80 percent of its coal jobs over the past five years. “I can tell you that we’re paying the price for it.”
But since that much-ballyhooed vote in early Feburary, this is how many new coal jobs have been created in Appalachia: Zero.
And there are no signs there are any coming any time soon: Tyler White, president of the Kentucky Coal Association, couldn’t say how many jobs he thought the repeal of the Rule would create, “but I can tell you that it definitely will help stop the bleeding. "
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/03/the-obama-administration-idea-to-save-coal-country-214885
On February 2, in one of his first acts as Senate Majority Leader of the 115th Congress, Mitch McConnell ushered through the repeal of the Stream Protection Rule.
The Obama-era regulation had taken eight years to write, emerging on the last day of the Obama administration, only to be snuffed out two weeks later. In the so-called War on Coal, this was the first time coal had punched back, drawing cheers from Washington to Appalachia.
“We cannot allow the legacy of the Obama administration to continue damaging our communities.” McConnell wrote in a self-congratulatory op-ed in the Lexington Herald-Leader.
The Stream Protection Rule, and “a wave of environmental regulations” like it, according to a spokesperson for the American Public Power Association, have long been the source of Republican anger towards Obama-era energy policy, which conservatives contend is the reason that 40,000 coal miners have lost their jobs, 11,000 in Kentucky alone, since 2011.
That was the year the EPA announced a stricter air standard that had the effect of forcing coal-fired power plants to shift to natural gas at a time when the price of gas had fallen to historic lows.
“This tragedy in central Appalachia is a direct result of government action,” said former governor of Kentucky, Paul Patton, a Democrat, and currently the chancellor of the University of Pikeville in Pike County, which has lost 80 percent of its coal jobs over the past five years. “I can tell you that we’re paying the price for it.”
But since that much-ballyhooed vote in early Feburary, this is how many new coal jobs have been created in Appalachia: Zero.
And there are no signs there are any coming any time soon: Tyler White, president of the Kentucky Coal Association, couldn’t say how many jobs he thought the repeal of the Rule would create, “but I can tell you that it definitely will help stop the bleeding. "
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/03/the-obama-administration-idea-to-save-coal-country-214885
